As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander's wasting springs; _195
As divinest Shakespeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light
Like omniscient power which he
Imaged 'mid mortality;
As the love from Petrarch's urn, _200
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp by which the heart
Sees things unearthly;--so thou art,
Mighty spirit--so shall be
The City that did refuge thee. _205

Lo, the sun floats up the sky
Like thought-winged Liberty,
Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height;
From the sea a mist has spread, _210
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago.
By the skirts of that gray cloud
Many-domed Padua proud _215
Stands, a peopled solitude,
'Mid the harvest-shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow _220
With the purple vintage strain,
Heaped upon the creaking wain,